Spam Levels Down Remarkably During H1-2011, Reports M86

According to M86 Security the security company, which published its new H1-2011 (January-June 2011) report, spam volumes have dropped tremendously from 2010 levels, as per Macworld.co.uk dated July 19, 2011.

Confirming this decline and at the reduced volume since then, M86 Security's latest report says that all other reliable security firms have been stating the same regarding spam volumes following the shutdown of Spammit.com the host for pharmaceutical spam, during September 2010.

Moreover, the SVI (Spam Volume Index) of M86 Security is currently 2000-or-so, approximately 50% of the value during the majority of 2010, which was 4,000-6,000. This suggests a favorable development due to help from law enforcement, which interrupted many major botnets, particularly Bredolab, Mega-D and Rustock.

Meanwhile, according to M86 Security, phishing e-mails aren't as common as before since they currently contribute merely at the rate of one in 1,000 spam mails dispatched, albeit spam carrying attachments continue to be around five percent of total spam.

Next, M86 Security's report also discusses scams through social networks that have climbed to fresh heights. Websites like Twitter and Facebook have gotten to be routine attack points for scams. Presently, scams not merely pressurize end-users for revealing personal information through Internet polls, which yield commissions to scammers, but also make end-users vulnerable to malware. This' evident from one instance wherein innumerable users of Facebook have been victimized with a malware scam pretending to be a web-link supposedly taking onto a sex-video associated with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former IMF chief ever-since the alleged reports about him sexually engaging with a woman attendant in a New York hotel. The scam stayed alive for over 72-hrs, the report mentions.

Lastly, during H1-2011, personalized assaults grew, which utilized Microsoft Excel files having Flash (.swf) documents for abusing security flaws, M86 notes. This technique, employed within the personalized assault on RSA, say, is difficult for security software to spot since both elements require being split for assessment, M86 concludes.